Pilot Vanishing Point

I’m not sure what to say about the Pilot Vanishing Point. There is a lot to like about it, but there is just as much to not like about it. The most striking thing about it is the unique look, and it is not a good one; at least not for me. You can either get a regular blackish one or one of the other. My biggest problem with all of the other designs is that they kind of have a Mont Blanc vibe going on or as I usually say “a little bit too grand daddy for my taste”.

The regular black is very utilitarian and that is fine. Not every pen you own need to have be considered a piece of art (the Lamy 2000) to be great.

My two “gripes” with this pen is the clip and ink capacity.

The clip on this pen is placed in the grip section, which means that it is either bothering you or not. My impression is that it is either a little bit or very annoying to fellow lefties. I can see why some people hate it, but I’m not that bothered by it itself. But I do not for the life of me understand why Pilot can’t use the lower profile clip they had in the past or why they can’t make a left handed version that is reversed. For christ sake, you can get a replacement nib section, and you can’t get a left handed version of the outer casing? There should be a large enough section in the market for lefties for this.

Pilot Converters and me is an old problem, and I’m pretty sure it will go on until they make them bigger or I die. I’m betting on the latter. It drives me nuts that they can’t make something large enough to get me through a day of a lot of writing. It usually lasts me 2-3 days if I’m only writing tasks and so on. But that can be cut down to somewhere between a few hours and half a day if I write a lot. For example if I take a lot of notes in a meeting or if I am in charge of taking the minutes.

This is why I always carry more than one pen.

Where this pen shines is in the coating and the utility of it. I love how fast I can go from “not writing” to “writing”. And the coating on the pen makes it very comfortable to write for longer periods without feeling slippery. It is the thing I go for the first if I am not going to sit down to write for longer periods.